NICK Pope can still remember the day, nearly a decade ago, when it seemed his dream of a career in professional football was over.

To outside eyes in 2008 Pope looked to be living the dream. An Ipswich Town season-ticket holder progressing through the ranks of his boyhood club. But on the inside, all was not well.

When a 16-year-old Pope was called into a meeting with academy bosses at Portman Road he knew what was coming. It was over.

That rejection makes his subsequent rise all the more remarkable. One of the Premier League’s stories of 2017/18 so far, Pope had never played a minute of top flight football before the start of September. In October he was voted one of the league’s best players.

There have been six clean sheets in nine games, talk of an England call-up and questions over how Clarets captain Tom Heaton will get back into the side at Turf Moor. It’s a far cry from that disappointing day in East Anglia.

“It seems a million miles away at the minute,” Pope said this week when asked to look back on the day he was released by the Tractor Boys.

“To come this far is a long journey and something I could never have pictured back then.”

Pope remains a fan of the academy system but admits it wasn’t working for him. His game had stagnated and he wasn’t enjoying his football so it came as no surprise when the end arrived.

With the benefit of hindsight he can see the rejuvenating impact his Ipswich release has had on his career, but the heartbreak was present and painful at the time.

“Looking back it was the best thing that happened. It gave me a jolt and forced a change in my life that I probably needed. And in my football as well,” the 25-year-old said.

“It has worked out but I was devastated at the time. It wasn’t a surprise. I had seen it coming.

“I was low on confidence, didn’t think I was good enough. I remember the games. I wasn’t playing well, wasn’t playing good football and I was called into a meeting. I was waiting for the bad news, really.”

With the cosseted and comfortable academy lifestyle over Pope was flung into the real world.

He went to play for Bury Town in the Isthmian League, a move he credits with his development since, and considered what exactly he was going to do to earn a living.

Did he think his dreams of a football career were over? “I probably did to be honest but being out of the academy system I didn’t really have to think about it,” he said.

“I didn’t have to worry about whether I was going to get the next contract or the next scholarship or whether I would make it. It was over. It was all out of the window and I just started to enjoy my football again.

“I was leaving that system where it’s a very controlled and high pressure environment of academy football. To come out of it was something that was actually a breath of fresh air.”

The rejection from his boyhood club was still difficult to take and although he wasn’t enjoying his time at Portman Road, Pope didn’t feel leaving of his own accord was an option.

“I was an Ipswich fan so it was nothing I felt I could ever walk away from because if they allowed me to train with them it was a massive honour,” he said.

“I wasn’t massively enjoying it but had no other option until they told me ‘we don’t want you here any more.’”

Pope admits he wasn’t sure what the real world was going to have in store for him. His dad is a farmer - “I actually didn’t know what I was doing. I was just told ‘move this tractor there, do that’’’ - but he studied marketing and sports science at college, and university beckoned until he was handed his second chance in the professional game when Charlton spotted his potential.

“I’d been accepted at Nottingham University and was going to go there in the September, but signed for Charlton in the April, and that was a case of if you miss that ship it really is all over,” Pope remembers.

“But I wasn’t that worried about football. There was a lot of talk of things like ‘you could train with us, have a trial’ and they never came off. So even when Charlton came in I thought until I hear anything concrete I won’t think about it too much.”

Pope played around 150 games as a teenager for Bury Town and he believes that played a major part in his development.

“I was 16 and then playing men’s football, and you meet some people, you really do,” he said.

“You go to some grounds that are not the best. You have people behind the goals abusing you and you don’t get it in an academy.

“I quite enjoyed it, because it’s so far from what you know.”

Pope grasped his second chance at Charlton and after six loan spells away from the Valley he impressed for the Addicks in the Championship despite them suffering relegation, earning his move to Burnley.

It’s been an unusual journey: “I would say that,” he added.

“The number of loans I have had, the level I started at, to come this far is quite rare.”